August STRONG Award

Val Manning

Recognized for Resilience, Nurture, and Growth

Most goals that walk through our door sound like some version of "I want to get stronger." Val's was different. Val's goal was a squat in the middle of Africa.

She was preparing for a week of camping there, and the trip had no traditional restrooms. Which meant that at some point, several times a day, she was going to have to get all the way down into a deep squat — and then get all the way back up, on uneven ground, with nothing to hold onto. That was the fear. Not the flight. Not the terrain. The getting back up.

So that became the training goal. And then COVID canceled the trip.

Val kept training anyway. When travel opened back up, she went — and she did the whole thing. Everything she wanted to do on that trip, she did. That is the short version of why Val Manning is our August STRONG Award recipient. The longer version is better.

Resilience

Val's body has not made this easy on her.

The vertigo comes and goes with no pattern anyone can predict. There's no warning, no season, no trigger we can plan around. It simply shows up. Two to three months ago, back pain joined it — the kind that made everything feel unstable and uncertain, that made even sitting in a car for any real length of time difficult.

Here is what Val did with both of those: she showed up and told us about it.

That's the part worth pausing on. The easy version of a bad body day is to cancel. Val's version is to walk in, say exactly what's going on, and let us adjust the session around it. During the back pain, she kept coming in specifically to move and loosen things up — and it worked. It took time, but it worked, and she came out the other side of it.

That willingness to say here's what I'm feeling today is what makes the adaptation possible in the first place. A coach can only modify what a member is honest about. Val is honest about it, every time, which is why she almost never loses ground.

Nurture

If you train at five o'clock on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays, you already know Val — because Val is the reason that group feels the way it does.

We call them the Classics. Some of those members have been with us well past four hundred sessions. They've become something closer to a family than a class. They go to craft shows together. They trade produce and eggs. They notice when someone's missing.

That doesn't happen by accident, and it doesn't happen from the coaching side of the room. It happens because when a newcomer walks in — nervous, not sure where to stand, not sure if they belong — Val is the one who goes to them. She introduces herself. Then she introduces them to everyone else. Then she does the thing that actually matters: she finds the common ground. Something she knows about them and something she knows about somebody else in the room, and she hands it to both of them.

That five o'clock group now runs six to seven people a session, and they are among the most committed and most enthusiastic people we train. A lot of that traces directly back to how Val makes people feel in their first ten minutes in the building.

Growth

Val has been with us since before "us" existed.

She started training with John in Sacramento, back when he was somebody else's employee. She trained online with him through COVID. When the business opened its doors in Folsom, she came with it. She is, in the truest sense of the word, a founding member — and she has now logged over six hundred sessions.

Six hundred sessions is not a straight line. There have been highs and lows in the weights, seasons of building and seasons of managing. But across that stretch, we have watched Val press twenty-pound dumbbells for reps and pick up seventy-plus-pound kettlebells for reps.

Val doing Dual Dumbbell Pivot Point Press October 2022

We'll be honest about how we read those numbers, though. We are not a gym that measures growth primarily in pounds on a bar. We measure it in capability — in what your body can do when life asks something of it. By that measure, Val's growth has been remarkable: she started out afraid she couldn't stand back up on her own, and she finished a week in the African bush doing everything she set out to do.

What she does every single session is challenge herself. Regardless of what her body brought in with her that day, she looks for the next weight, the next rep, the next thing that is slightly harder than last time. That's not a phase she went through. That's six hundred sessions of it.

Why It Matters

Val Manning earned this award the way it's meant to be earned — not in a single moment, but in the accumulation of hundreds of ordinary ones. Showing up when her body argued. Telling the truth about how she felt. Making a stranger feel like a regular. Reaching for the heavier bell.

Val, thank you for going first, for staying, and for making the room better for everyone in it.

Together, we are capable. Together, we are STRONG.